City of Exiles
by Odeveca
Summary: REVISED. No one was sorry to see him die, except me. Jonathan Morgernstern was the bane of Alicante, but still the love of my life. This is our story, from beginning to end. This is how he saved an exiled mercenary, and in return I followed his demon-heart to ruin and a hell bound adventure. (Jonathan x OC). DISCONTINUED.
1. Chapter 1

_**AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a revision of The Demon Boy and The Adamas Girl, and will follow the OC (Lennie), an assassin that is hired by a Warlock to kill mundane, shadowhunter, demon, and Downworlder alike. Will pick up right before City of Glass and go beyond City of Heavenly Fire. I hope that you all Enjoy!**_

 _ **City of Exiles**_

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

* * *

"There used to be six of us… Now I'm all alone."

In this dark underworld of kill or be killed, there were none left to hear the teenage assassin _'bitch and moan'_ about her fucked up memories, but it didn't matter in the larger scheme of things.

She wiped her seraph blade against her ripped shirt, leaving another bloody mess. "It takes a very broken, twisted soul to do what I do." She lifted her arm to rub the blood that trickled down her sliced cheek. "Killing poor suckers like you."

The wound healed up before she could truly feel how deep it had gone this time, and so then she lifted her sticky maroon fingers to her perfectly smooth forehead, she made a sticky line across her impenetrable cranium, and another bloody line across her nose. A Congolese sign for a battle fought and won.

"My squad." All hardy six. "I don't even remember their faces anymore." That was half the problem. Ask her what she did this morning, this past week, month, _but last year_ … that is where things got fuzzy, all the faces of her past were fuzzy, and stayed so despite her meddling daydreams. "Even now they still haunt me."

The assassin kept pretending that the Fae male she had shoved her blade into was still alive. "Watching the people, you love die… it's not something you can forget." She said it as if she wasn't the _last woman left alive_ in this forgotten alleyway. The corpse made a gurgling noise from its mouth, and she smiled brightly.

"Oh, you like my crazy hair! You're too kind!"

With a small fuss, she touched her hair that had lost its natural curl and had turned into a frizzy sun-cloud beneath her pounding skull. Her fluttering eyes were a bit too excited for having single-handedly taken down a Fae Prince and his retinue of equally immortal bodyguards, but that had always been her way. "Thanks for noticing. I wanted to look my best for his highness, even if no one noticed."

The possibly crazed assassin-girl got no response from the fallen corpse, whom no longer had a jaw to speak of, it was lost among the pile of his fallen brethren, and as could be expected she didn't have the kindness to return it to him.

 _"Even if no one noticed."_ It was very quiet as she said it again, just her lying on the pile of limbs and torsos, alone on the stone floor of the Barcelona alley of the Gothic Quarter, especially when the only sound was her own labored breathing from the fight with the Dark Fae Prince's notorious lover the Green Gem.

 _"Ring around the rosies, pocket full of posies."_ Our assasin remembered the fallen female's confident smirk as she had been the first to attack.

 _The Dark Prince had commanded with an air of snobbery, "Get her my darling Gem. End her."_

 _"Yes, my love." She had remembered their quick footed dance as they had been hugged by looming gothic styled buildings, above her pinned clothes flapped in the windows overhead, pots of flowers cast in the shade of a moonless sky, and here she was left standing, golden crazed hair, perspiring dark honey skin, white gnashing teeth, and her opponents were a bloody work to pile, a green haired head going on top. "Ashes, Ashes…"_

The Green Gem; the royal bodyguard, had sickly green hair and deathless onyx eyes, and they had widened to deep dark holes when our assassin impaled her bare belly through a lamppost.

She had to give it to the Gem, the immortal bodyguard had some spunk in her. Not only did she manage to still free herself while our assassin had been distracted with her fellow Fae comrades, the persistent female seemed to land a death-blow that would have killed, should have killed our teenage assassin, if only she was human, and as a fellow predator made flesh she could respect that.

She remarked sullenly once more, _"They all fall down."_

She replayed all the faces she had helped _fall_ _down_ as she was laying on the stone-cold pile of squishy bodies and facing up to the pitch-black night. The teenage assassin exhaled the restlessness that came from the high of a good fight, and relaxed a bit before she decided to burn what was left of them. When her eyes finally drifted shut they would land on the closed white shutters leaning over her prostrated body.

It was as if the sleeping mundanes above were looking down at her, judging her, judging her unruly golden curls saturated in heavy liquid, glaring disgust at her bare skin caked in red, her jeans unsalvageable, and yet she was beginning to feel at home laying on someone's shredded arm and using someone else's gutted intestines as a make-shift squishy pillow.

The peace from the bloodshed didn't last.

"Uh oh." She perked up on her elbows when she felt eyes on her, "how?" How had someone sneak up on her. "Hello, can I help you!?"

She got no response as she scanned her suspiciously empty surroundings, silently nudging her trusty seraph blade digging into her knee, and someone's lost pocket-knife tickling the bottom of her bare foot as she found the source.

It wasn't empty for long, a blonde-haired young man with an insufferable smug aura stood at the end of her alleyway. Rolling off him was a proud character so much more obnoxious than the Fae Prince had graced her with, and his essence was of… _was of a killer on his own warpath._

A blink of an eye and he was closer, leaning against the building, silent and calculating.

"Wow," she remarked in a worried gush of air, "you're fast," if that didn't give away that he was not all human, she was sure his appearance would.

He was a tall and muscular young man, blanketed in shadows appraising the fallen pile of corpses. He was not blacksmith muscular, but muscular like a warrior, with the warrior's proud posture and grace. She could feel his eyes appraising her own body covered in blood, and how she had once been laying comfortably on their already cold and bloating body parts. She guessed this _creepy as hell guy_ had come to finish her off for killing his friends.

Her abnormally luminescent gold eyes narrowed as she stood up, her back aching from where the dead man's elbow had been digging into it, and she cracked her neck and knuckles as he came forward.

"You're late." That was an understatement. "I already killed all your friends."

"Friends?" The stranger dared come closer, his voice rich and deep like honey dipped in manna, but cold in his meaning, and she tightened her grip over her seraph blade. He remarked in that same voice, _"What friends?"_

" _Your_ friends." She pointed Azriel at the dinner he had already served as an explanation, and she wouldn't keep her trusty blade from having a delicious dessert. This nosy stranger was going to be _very_ delicious with that gorgeous adam's apple that refused to stop bobbing _._ She was not sure if she wanted to slice it or lick it.

"Something tells me," he started forward, daring her tentative space, "that you knew them a bit better than I did." The stranger's humor oddly grew as he got close enough for her to see his face in with the barest touch of the street's luminescent light. "You gave them a bit of hell?"

"It's in the job description." She couldn't right give away all the details of her orders, "that and discretion against authorities and do-gooders." she could read him from a mile away, _a snoopy one._

He had a restless face, high-cheekbones, hard-pointed _Fae_ like chin, and enviously long blonde eyelashes. The assassin in her grudgingly noticed how lean and smooth his body moved in jaded black leather, a worthy opponent. Even in shadows, she could still tell the young man looked around her age and height, he could match her, could duel her in a heart-beat, and she knew this as she made no move for an escape.

No matter the danger she was intrigued.

 _"Something is right about you."_ she drawled. The horny female part of herself found him to be strangely pleasant to look at, handsome, ridiculously handsome even for human standards and she wondered if all of him would match. He walked closer, tempting the sanctity of her personal space, and her prickly instincts won over her swooning appraisal of such a handsome specimen.

He noticed, _"Enjoying the view darling?"_ He was close enough to pounce.

"Watch yourself." She adjusted her fighting stance, her hand gripping the seraph blade, and hyper-aware of his angelic runes etched on his naked neck and arms. Such marks were usually married with a rich and glossy black costume of Alicante's keepers of the Downworld peace. _Not a mundane_ , she thought. _He is a fucking Clave dog_.

"Oh, they aren't my friends," the bleached blonde _shadowhunter_ muttered with an air of boredom. "And if they were, would it matter?"

"I guess not." She was left in disbelief, because instead of arresting her _,_ he was getting his own better look at the twelve bodies that had fallen at her hands. She found his behavior odd from the previous Clave members that had found her. Odd because he wasn't fighting or detaining her for the murders she had so evidently taken. "A Fae Prince got on the wrong side of his twin sister," she revealed, curious to how he would react, and disappointed when he didn't react, "bad blood with Dark Courts, sad to see they couldn't settle their own fights themselves. But that's the Fae's way for you."

He hummed at her words. "You finished them off quickly. You kept that head-on tactic," so he had been watching her, perhaps for longer than she would have liked, "and I would say it would get you killed." He rubbed his smirking lips. "But you don't have that problem, do you? Well done." He congratulated her, and all but turned her into a quiet mouse, unsure at the angle he was playing.

 _"Thanks."_ She muttered sub-consciously. "This group were a pain in my ass. They didn't make my job very easy, but all good things come..." She subtly put her back to the building's wall as the strange shadowhunter came closer to the dead bodies, not mentioning or noticing how her goosebumps riddled arms got worse with his proximity.

He finished her words, "All good things come to those that work their asses off."

Lennie saw the Shadowhunter's face turn fuzzy for a moment. _Those dark eyes had been green once…._

Something pushed her to ask, " _What are you really here for?"_

He didn't answer her at first, but when he broke the silence, the shadowhunter shattered it. "It took me a few days to track you down, but I am glad I didn't get here too late to see you already gone."

 _"You were tracking me?"_ That changed things, made this a bit less intriguing, and a bit more serious.

"Not anymore." He went on effortlessly, and if he had an accent she couldn't hear it, and it scared her how little he gave away. "You left me at a bar in Paris, you are very good at getting lost. Do you know that?""

That rubbed her the wrong way. People searching for her meant only two things. She was hoping it was the one where she didn't have to end their conversations indefinitely. The one where she could walk away richer. It was rare sight to see someone not scared shitless or looking for a good fight. Almost refreshing.

She breathed it in, releasing the after-shocks of her adrenaline high. "I don't do my business face-to-face," she corrected the stranger, "you can pick up your request and give your asking price to one of Solomon's guys. Then it will get back to me."

"What if I don't want to talk to Solomon? What if I wanted to talk to you?"

There was the Clave's arrogance she had come to despise, their superiority over Downworlders, and their belief that the world worked on their schedule. "I don't make the rules. That is how these things work." She was reminded of something far more important. "For the record, I don't get offers that involve shadowhunters, it usually means I have to deal with their whole glory-bound horde after that."

"Pity. Killing shadowhunters is fun," he remarks in that cold-tone she was beginning to believe was his attempt at humor. For once his angelic runes look sinister in the dark, perhaps even as sinister as the blood of her victims. It rare to have conversations with shadowhunters sent from the Clave.

"Aren't you going to arrest me?"

He drops the small smile that had been forming on his lips at the pile of the dead bodies. "Why would I arrest you?"

For a second, she thought it was sarcasm, but then she thought differently when nothing smug came to his eyes. "Literally everything about this is illegal. You do know that?"

 _"So?"_

She couldn't believe her luck.

Her questions came out breathless. "You're not with the Clave?"

He smiled with his enviously white teeth, and for once Lennie is speechless. "What do you think?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2** **  
**

* * *

She gave him three stories.

Three stories of when she had killed shadowhunter targets, and the hassle it was to get the Clave off her trail of vengeance and bloodthirsty fun. He listened in rapt attention, those shark eyes unwavering, intelligent, and she expanded unnecessary points just for the sake of prolonging their conversation.

She deduced. "Maybe that is why you had such a hard time finding me."

"You've been playing hide and seek with the Clave?" Lennie liked his analogy, found it funny to that the almighty Clave would keep _seeking_ for a very long time. He did that thing with his eyes that meant he was impressed. "And they still haven't found you?"

 _"_ _For years."_ It was partly the biggest reason why she was an expert at disappearing and reappearing on the job. Discretion in this profession called her to do day in and day out. "I have already spent too much time here as it is." She thought aloud. "Someone's bound to be on my trail by now."

"Sounds to me like they can't cut you some slack." It was nice of him to notice. "Assassins have to go on vacations too."

" _Yeah right,_ a vacation sounds too good to be true." She shrugs at the hassle she had gotten used to now. "Shadowhunters are fun to take down, but the after effects are a pain in the ass. Like I said, I couldn't sit still for a year, had to kill a few more shadowhunters, stay underground, and then got caught up with some warlords in the Congo just so I could burn them off my trail."

He rubbed his forearms that went around his pulled-up knees, his silver-white arm hair almost invisible in the dark. "Too bad. I was going to suggest we attack the Barcelona Institute. See what Spain is made of."

She finds that funny for some reason. That was the second time he got her to laugh. They fall into a comfortable silence as they sit against the alleyway, and way he looks at her in quiet rapture sends shivers down her spine.

He notices. "You're cold?"

She stops shivering. "No."

"Hm." he begins rubbing his mouth with his thumb in thought. She is intrigued on what is going on in that snarky and worldly mind of his.

She was not one to be subtle. It was no wonder that she said, "are looking for a good fuck?"

His eyes widen, and she can't help but laugh.

"I got you! But really." She opened her arms in invitation, "if you are, then this could be a different conversation."

That made the strange shadowhunter crack smile on his alabaster white face. "You've always been funny." He doesn't move forward at her request, or move a bit away from it either. He stays still. A stalemate. He rubs his hair the same mindless move he did with his mouth, and his hand turns fuzzy for a moment, _there used to be blood on that hand…_

She rubs her head at his mysterious words, "ugh, migraine." The pain in her skull picked up, and she had to apologize to her stranger. "What were you saying again?"

He opened his mouth, only to close it. She could see the definitive shapes of his white teeth in the dark. "What if we team up?" He boldly asked, "let's see how well your jokes lasts against the demon horde heading this way. I hear that one of them names himself Jarvis." Her eyes widened at that foul creature's name.

His tone changed. "What? _Red-Handed_ _Lennie_ is afraid of an Eidolon mob-moss?"

Lennie stood up, and cocked her head at his condescending edge to his words, getting the rubber band around her wrist and tying up her hair. "Hell, yeah I'm scared of him, he's completely bonkers. Why the hell didn't you tell me sooner? You trying to get me caught?"

"Why would I want to do that?" He raised one of his gorgeous eyebrows, and she wanted to trace it with her fingers.

"You know answering with a question doesn't make you any less suspicious." Lennie had to physically stop herself from checking out the angelic runes that moved with his muscled arms, snow cropped hair that made her want to dig her fingers in, and the suave jet-black clothes that looked like something he would pick out of her own closet, because he still a stranger, probably one of Jarvis' scouts. A _sexy_ scout. "That doesn't mean I'm not going to tear his ass to grass, and mow down the rest of him. You make sure to run back and tell him I said that shadowhunter."

His incredibly black eyes were playful. "I've never met Jarvis." Like she could believe that. "But, I am sure we can tell him together when he gets here."

The teenage assassin that tricked the Clave into running circles wasn't worried. "I will be long gone by then; the asshole probably has another way to get be immobilized." That was the only fear she had of him now, "I'll catch him on my own terms, at my own time. See you around shadowhunter." She pulled down a metal staircase, it would lead to the roofs, and she would take those to the sea…

"You've turned into a coward Lennie."

Her calloused hands froze on the stairwell she was about to climb up. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Lennie eyed him as he blew out some air from his nose, like a grumpy dragon, "Nothing, forget I even brought it up."

"I can't." Lennie was not sure she wanted to. She had forgotten too many things to be considered whole, if he had not noticed the stories she had shared of being on the run, were more precious to her than any of Solomon's buyers could give her. "Did you know me? Do you know me from before…" she could have been raving to another person, but the shadowhunters eyes widened? _Why?_ "Do you know who I was?"

"I did." Was his solemn reply, as if he was at her own funeral.

"In what capacity?" She lifted Azriel at the menace that seemed to have lost his smug confident voice, "how did you know me? When?" She hoped it was from years ago, that he could add something to Solomon's plans to restoring her memories permanently. That she would be done with the half-awake fuzzy daydreams and get the real thing. "I can't remember…" she muttered in desperation, "I try every day to remember something…"

"You are still the same Lennie," he remarked coldly. A bit too much emotion came to his face and his straightforward falsetto, "you are the same now, you don't have to remember."

"That's not a good enough answer." She could hear Jarvis now, the footfalls loud in the dead alleyways of Barcelona, and still this stranger distracted her beyond sound reason. "How did you know me?"

He gave her nothing. Not a smirk, not a flicker of his eyes, and not a nervous flicker of his fingers. A statue made flesh. She would have been impressed if she wasn't so bloody frustrated. "A story for another time perhaps."

"Great, there goes my night." More like her peace of mind. Something was off about him, no one could be this controlled, but she reminded herself everything looked dangerous in the shadows.

Before she could ask him which team he really was on, someone interrupted them, "Lennie! You bitch!"

"Jarvis."

It was Jarvis. He called her out, his posse of shape-shifting demons hot on his heels. His stylish clothes, curling horns on his forehead, and red skin seemed like he was going for an _ifrit look_ today, _that hip looking fuck_. He wasn't the only one, shape-shifters were a pain in the ass to recognize, but her bones told them, and that it was him. Only a slimball like him would get her this pumped up to kill, and then he was pointing a black claw at her. "You killed my brother!"

"You murdered my friends." Lennie said just as viciously.

"He brought his own friends," the shadowhunter next to her thought it wise to notice, "looks like you are going to have to take them down before you get to him." She knew it. Jarvis always brought company, ten able-bodied Eidolon demons, wielding demon blades, spikes, and a crossbow that was trained on her.

"Stay behind me shadowhunter." Lennie teased him as she picked up her seraph blade. The time for running and hiding was long gone. "This is a lady's fight."

"Oh," he crossed his arms over his chest, " _my lady_."

His words were like warm sugar. Now she wanted to rub against that rippling chest, and _ugh…_ she had to stop molesting him with her eyes. It would only make her horny latter on when she found she couldn't keep him. He whispered as her enemies loomed closer, "I am going to enjoy watching this. I have yet to see you in action."

"Stop it. Don't make me nervous." Lennie rubbed her suddenly pink cheeks, and picked up one of the smaller Fae blades on the ground, and got a running start at the group of demons.

She picked up the same lethal dance from before and targeted Jarvis himself standing at the front of the mob. She didn't give any of his demon mob a chance to react when her skin turned to Adamas forged rock.

Her shadowhunter stranger watched her take out every one of Jarvis' men. The first had to be the crossbow, the next was the tallest, she landed a hit that was met by several _twangs_ , her body was mercilessly adept by design, rocking back and forth from one kill to the other, and honed to be a precise weapon after killing by any means necessary. When she tore a man's head off, she would confess that she was showing off a bit, twirling, and evading the blows, and moving her Adamas wrist and hand to slice their heads clean off, and that is how she got through one by one, and left Jarvis for last.

"Remember me fucker." She said before kicking him square in the jaw.

"It was meant to be a game," Jarvis chuckled, wiping the ichor from his broken mouth, moving it back into place, "but you made it personal."

"No, you did, when you killed my family," she remembered the six faces, fuzzy, but still there. "I'm going to enjoy this."

She took his death slow. In the same way he had painfully slowed the death of two of her squad mates, and sending the last into a fit of insanity at the death of his wife. This ruthless mob-boss of Barcelona was one of the demons responsible for killing two members of her mercenary team, he had been smart to stay hidden after all this time, and now he was going to pay dearly for it by drinking his own demon blood.

Lennie rubs the dark ichor from her nose, smearing it across her mouth, and she spits the foul taste on the already bloodbath ground. She never liked spurting arteries, especially when it seemed to always get in her mouth.

"Personal. So, this is what personal looks like." Her stranger had not once looked away from her passionate acts of revenge. White and black versus her gold and red. Still, he looked like he was attracted to her bloody difference. "Well it's creative, you think Jarvis was thirsty or something?"

"That was personal." Lennie agreed with him, she wanted to put it into simple terms. "Amongst killers there are codes, and you don't fuck with a person's squad. Ever." They looked back at the crumpled heap of skin and bones that had once belonged to a demon-mob boss. Watching it go back to the hellish dimension it had crawled out of.

The morning sun was rising, it's rays creeping down the building's walls, people waking, and Lennie surprisingly was not tired. In fact, her belly and legs felt like they wanted to straddle a stool and drink the ache away.

He asked as they hid from a passerby. "Want to go for a drink?"

 _"_ _Did you just read my mind?"_

 _"_ _Um, yes?"_ He looked unsure.

She was beginning to like this sadistic and black humor galore stranger, sure he was hiding something that was driving her up the wall, but she couldn't let him see it, not if she didn't want him to know the power he had without even spilling his sappy story that led him to his sick humored mind, and the one that had apparently led to the old Lennie that only he had the answers to.

"Hell, yeah you did!" She beckoned with her bloody hand. "Follow me."

Before burning the bodies of her two fights, Fae and half-demon alike, Lennie had picked up the spare change from the bodies. In the sickly-sweet glow of the bonfires, she stripped her bloody shirt and jeans for a clean one, wiping as much as she could from her face, and covering her body in a black trench coat she had brought for this very reason.

She left them to burn. "Let's go shadowhunter."

In seconds they were off into the far busier streets of rapid-speaking Castellano people waking up for the day, and Lennie pretended as if her stranger had not checked out her blood-soaked bra as she undressed. "I didn't even get your name?"

"Jon."

Lennie smirked. That was not the first time she had heard that. "Okay John Smith. You don't have to tell me your real name."

"It's actually Jonathan Morgenstern."

She dropped her smile.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

After Jon uttered the infamous name 'Morgenstern' they had their first fight.

They battled on the mundane street, taking out a cabbie and its driver, and it only reached its finale in another deserted and equally filthy alleyway.

It had ended up with her seraph blade in his arm, and her hesitating in killing him after he gritted out his proposal to make her revenge sweeter on Jarvis.

"You're a monster. Why should I believe you?"

"Touché my Lady." He cocked a brow. "You have nothing to lose. You are going to have to trust me."

Every fiber of her being told her not to. That his raw strength of his was something to fear, not to admire. She stared down into his dark eyes, and for some reason she did not feel like the same girl that had laid on the pile of bodies, alone, and lost. She felt more alive… more… _fuck it_ , she knew when she was being played, but she was going to get what she could on the way down.

She lifted her seraph blade from driving it into his windpipe, still straddling his muscular body. "You have three hours Jonathan Morgernstern."

"Give me one hour, and I will make it your while." He pushed her off when he saw the silent agreement in her own eyes. He seemed to enjoy surprising her because he gave his hand to lift her off up to her feet, patting it as if he was giving her marrying her off, and just like that they had joined up to take down Jarvis' legacy.

Lennie learned that he was very persuasive with his words, manipulating Jarvis' lackies and investors with a flair of practiced speech, perhaps that something he had inherited from his diabolical traitor of a father of his, but that didn't mean she wasn't any less deathly wary of him.

Even after he had fulfilled his proposal, she was still mulling her decision at keeping him alive.

"Hot chocolate or coffee?"

"Coffee." He answered with confidence.

Lennie frowned, the waitress coming too soon, "what's it going to be?"

"Two hot chocolates." Lennie said before he could partake in the foulest beverage known to man, and disgust her further with his poor judgement.

He lifted his eyebrow but didn't say anything else. He was getting smarter.

"You weren't such a huge fan of hot chocolate," he imparted to her, "what changed your taste buds?"

She gritted her teeth, "you don't get to say things like that." She needed to make that known before he whittled her nerves to a fragile splinter, "unless," she debated with him, knowing he wouldn't give her the pleasure, "you are going to tell me the whole story, _you big tease."_

He chuckled sadistically in the evening glow of that exhausting day, "not today."

"Exactly so keep your _big mouth shut_."

He rubbed that _knowing smiling mouth_ in the back of a too bright café, reminiscing on something that he found funny about her old self, as they drank some celebratory hot chocolates and expensive up the ass croissants by a very flirtatious mundane waitress that got the pleasure of seeing Jonathan's un-glamoured body of a lean gladiator.

"Don't take this in a bad way." He sipped his coffee that he had ordered when the waitress had returned. He was more stubborn than she was, "because I mean it in the most respectful way possible."

"I am already offended." Lennie replied grimly, but more curious than anything.

He chuckled, and then suddenly Jonathan's previous cold-hearted face returned once more, gone was the polite Castellano he had acted for the mundane waitress, and as she watched him transform, he let his tongue flick out like a serpent. He licked off the bit of the foul coffee that had dripped down his sensuous lips. "You don't strike me as a professional criminal, and frankly you have become a bit lazy, letting me get all the work done. Do you let Solomon pull your leash and lead you now?"

"Solomon is not my Master." Lennie brought her own delicious cup to her own tingling lips. "He's a boss that pays me, there is a difference."

 _"_ _Oh. Is that the difference?"_ His lips quivered into a smile. She had been wanting to do naughty things to his lips all day after they both had demolished Jarvis' Barcelona gang from history, and now she would not touch him with a pole for drinking the bitter beverage from hell.

"You're right. I'm not a professional." Lennie weighed her words. They did make a good team, despite how infamous his name was around the world, and the _big baddie that was his daddie_. But she wasn't going to change her tactics just because he seemed offended by her style. "That is what makes me so good at what I do. _Jonathan_ ," the face he made meant he disliked that name, "here's a tip, if you want to be the best killer, pretend to the be the worst. No one expects anything when you pretend to be lazy up the ass."

"You like the word ass."

He did not know the half of it. "Not just the word."

Lennie leaned her foot forward to trail up his calf.

Watching in tense anticipation as his dark eyes narrowed and he leaned closer so he could imitate the same with her own jeaned shin, his boot was less soft against her bare skin, rough even. She liked that. She leaned closer and his eyes widened for a bit, but composed themselves in a second more. "You're not easy to scare off?"

"I'm not the type." Lennie sipped her hot chocolate smugly. "You are going to have to try harder than that."

"Challenge accepted."

"Competitive." She noticed. Even if she was having fun with him, the question still leaked off her own tongue. "You're not as evil as people think you are, why is that? Are you playing nice because you need me for something?"

"No. My father has no idea I'm here." He licked his lip unconsciously, and she made a kissy face at him that threw him off.

He took her flirting as an invitation, his voice turning warmer, "and he never will if I have anything to say about it." Jonathan moved his milky hand across the table, and Lennie let him touch her, watching his fingers grazed against her soft dark skin, tracing an imaginary pattern.

In a comforting second his demeanor changed, fear prickled through her when his nails scratched rudely across her skin, "ow." It drew blood and shining stone, perhaps he was trying to see the brilliant white Adamas that lay underneath her dark skin, or wanted to break her calm attitude, but she could care less his reason, no one had dared to do that to her, and she tore her injured arm away from him at the injustice to her trust.

"What the hell was that for?"

"To remind you." he had been expecting a reaction like this, his smile victorious. "I'm much worse than the rumors say. Let me teach you something Lennie, pretend to be kind when in fact you are anything but. People would do almost anything if you make them feel special."

"Okay little psychopath in training," she grinned at his useful advice, a bit interested in the undercurrent of politics that had seemed more a mystery than an explanation when she was sent to kill rich, poor, young, and old alike. _"That actually works on people?"_

"People love being indispensable, and to get to the top means you have to kiss more than a few asses to get there…" He pursed his lips, "what is the purpose of putting in all this work if we don't end up on top?" He kept up his cheerful attitude as if he had just confessed the biblical sense of fucking to her, and how bloody fantastic it would be.

"Good." Lennie smiled back just as widely. "I don't roll with pussies." That was the truth of her rules she had made for teaming up with assassins. "I don't have time to deal with you getting soft on me, or double crossing me because you get it into your mind that you can kill me where others have failed. It will not end well for you."

"I'm warned." He shrugged, bringing his arms back, and creating that protective barrier across his chest, and no wonder Lennie felt like something was off with him.

He asked. _"What?"_

She revealed her theory. "You're different from other shadowhunters. You got the arrogance down, but your methods," That was the first part of it, "you- you are-"

"Beautiful, a genius, immensely talented at killing"-

 _Arrogant._ But that was the least of the problem she was facing. His unstable tendencies only meant one thing. "Dangerous."

"What did you expect? I thought you liked a little danger. You sure enjoyed it today." He brought the cup to his lips and tipped it back, giving a satisfying sigh at the end. This handsome enigma set-off the small slither of survival in her brain, and partly because the stories she had heard of Valentine's _real_ son had been told differently to what she was seeing before her.

"They said you were Valentine's lap dog." Gone was the false warmth in Jonathan's eyes. In its place was something less kind. She still went on. "The stories paint you as his favorite minion, the secret experiment he hides form Idris. Mind you, you're still a secret to the Clave, but even solo ridin' assasins like me hear things in this line of work.

"What are people saying?"

She found no reason not to tell him. "The rumor mill is saying you won't be a secret for long. You planning on striking Alicante? Helping your daddy bring down the Clave?"

"Who told you that?" His hand clamped on the table between them. "Who has been feeding you this information?"

"Your father attacked the New York Institute." Lennie shrugged, "anyone with half a brain would guess where his final battle is going to end up. You just didn't seem like the type to follow him blindly. I hope I'm not wrong, it would be a waste of the potential I saw today. I would hate to die in a war for someone else's crown." That was her putting it lightly, he was great at this, search and seizure, making the enemy double guess themselves, and still drop them on their asses in the end. He was a tactician, brilliant for being only nineteen, and after her years of experience with competitive mercenaries that was saying something. "How about you ditch your dad, and come with me- "

"Stop." Jonathan clamped his hand over her arm, there was nothing of the playfulness from before, and Lennie felt her Adamas flare at the lethalness in his voice. "You don't know anything. So, stop talking."

Lennie narrowed her golden eyes and clenched the fist that she wrenched from his iron grasp. "Don't challenge me like that. It's just an offer. See you around Jonathan."

Lennie left before they tore this café to shreds.

The rejection felt heavy on her tongue as she strode down the street, turning down an alleyway, doubling back, and watching him leave the café. He covered his angelic runes with a heavy black coat he had not been wearing before, and then he too got lost in the mundane crowds of passerbys. Lennie missed him the moment she lost him.

She never told him how badly she wanted him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

"No, no, Fell I've told zou don't bring Bane into zis, _le mec est un trou du cul._ " Ragnor Fell must have said something in his American friend's defense because Solomon's face scrunched up as if he was eating a lemon, "I know e'z your buddy, but zis can just be between us, zou will see, iz better zis way," it appears Sol is busy doing buisness on the phone when she comes in, he is curling a finger around one of his white horns sticking out of his green hair, running a purple hand down his equally purple neck. "No, no, I will send Lennie when ze time comes," his bright green eyes mark her when she comes in, " _oui, oui_ , I will get back to zou."

Lennie waves at him, and her boss frowns deeper, "I have to go, _oui_ you too, _au revoir_."

Before he slams the phone onto the receiver, he screams at her, "Don't bleed on my floor!"

"I'm not!" She screeches back, showing him the hand that was holding most of the blood.

"Zou are!" He groans as if she shoved Azriel into him, "come on Lennie, I told zou a hundred times!"

She self-consciously touches her bleeding scalp, "but this isn't my fault, I can't get it to stop."

" _Baise le_." He cursed in French, proofing right in front of her, and bending down at her feet to clean up the pool of blood, and then shoving the whole row of paper towels in her bloody hands. "Clean it before it gets worse."

"Sure boss." She didn't see what was wrong, it's not like she wanted to get on his bad side.

Solomon Ash is such a clean freak when it comes to blood, it is a bit hypocritical. When he calms down enough, the High Warlock of Paris stops going back to his tinkering to point his finger to the restroom. "Be a good girl and go 'eal your forehead with ze cream in ze cabinet."

Lennie tip-toed through the empty parts of the floor that wasn't covered by trash and his warlock toys she didn't have the name to or care to have. "I told you Solomon. I don't want to be lady. I want to lure men to their death and laugh at when I pawn their sexy asses for money."

That got her the french Warlock's attention. Terror. Disgust. Lennie doesn't really know what went on in the Solomon mind anymore, but she never failed to feel victorious in making the immortal old grump uncomfortable. She could appreciate that he wore his emotions on his face, _so unlike the young people of this age..._

She flicked the dripping blood from her temple to the floor as he glared at her.

"By all ze gods and demons Lennie! The blood! At least put pressure on it," he pointed a purple finger, threatening, "before I make zou clean every drop."

She looked at the gruesomely filthy room, it would take weeks, if not a whole month to clean this place out. "It's not like you keep it clean in here anyways, why are you giving me such a hard time for some little blood?"

He could care less about that, apparently, she was worth more than the junk he keeps around here. "Zou are going to make zourself look all banged up. How am I going to sell zour expertise when zey see that someone got _luckeey_?" So, he was still hadn't got over the ugly ass scar that would form if she didn't use his healing cream. He was not one to hide his concerns for their public image. "I thought zou were supposed to be indestructible?" He muttered as if he had been duped. "What if zou would have died?"

 _Ah_ , there was that aloof concern she had been waiting on. "Don't worry Sol," she swung the cabinet, seeing spiders scatter from her view, as she searched for the cream amongst things that were outdated by decades, and found it only to open it and smell the foul healing potion. "I'll live to fight another day, maybe we could spar and we could see which of us is getting rusty? I promise I will be gentle." She fluttered her eyes at the Warlock.

Solomon knew who he was dealing with, and so he could hear her voice tempting misconduct. "Lennie, zou are a manipulative diamond do you know that? And zour tactics won't work on me." He was meaning the flirting bit. "So, you can stop before you waste our time."

"You wouldn't get rid of me," Lennie chuckled as she put back the healing potion, shutting his old ass cabinet, and then for some reason the thought troubled her, she leaned over the door separating them, " _would you get rid of me?"_

She saw the humor still on his lips, and gave a sigh of relief. "Honestly, I am _reeelly_ tempted," the wizard said and began levitating bottles and elixirs to the light of his flat's window and then going to his tinkering over something metallic and smoldering with heat.

The gifted wizard began levitated the smoldering hunk of metal in the air, it filled the suddenly to small space of the room, and it changed shapes faster than she could imagine them. It made a pulsing noise like an alien spaceship taking off into the sky, and then quite disappointingly went black, dull, and unmoving. Solomon cursed in German. That was obviously not what it was supposed to do.

Lennie changed the subject before he started throwing his own impersonation of World War III, "besides you would be pissed with my replacement. Giovanni, Eurielle, and Candy…" those were her competitors, all in the league of people Solomon would have wanted, "they can't hold a candle to me." She bragged. "They also have a bigger pocket than I do."

"Zen don't get zourself banged up zen." He told her smartly, "or else zour value decreases like everything else that doesn't fulfill its' purpose." He threw the piece of metal to the ground in disgust, "that took me twelve hours, and now I'm going to have to start from scratch…"

"That's rough." She really rubbed the rest of the the lotion, not wanting to lose any of the value Solomon saw in her. She knew that as his leading mercenary, her untouchable prestige would be tainted if someone saw her like this, _banged up_ , but the more irrational part of herself knew it would be fun to get her enemies morale up, and see them get sucker-punched into the next year. "No one can finish in record timing like me, that's that you keep me around."

That got his attention, "I keep zou around," he corrected her in that tone she was sure he had used with all the assassins before her, and probably with the ones long after she was gone, "because no one is _indestructible_ like zou. Why'd zou zink I put in all the time and effort to make sure zou stay zat way?" He commented hotly over his shoulder, refusing to give up his tinkering for a minute of socializing.

She couldn't find a decent mirror when she found a bandage, she asked the only person in the room, hoping he would drop his toys for a second. "Solomon, could you help me put it on?" He didn't even look her way, "Solomon are you -you are not listening to me," and he hummed in agreement.

"You must like me so much, I'm the best assassin you have ever had," Lennie said leaning back against one of his moth-eaten walls, and puffing out her chest, even bringing down her shirt a bit as she brought her bra cups closer, he didn't even look. "Did you hear me I said, _I'm the best you ever had_ ," he hummed again. She knew he was not paying attention.

"Really feeling the love Sol." She rubbed his Warlock cream against the bandage before securing it, feeling it tickle and heat her forehead, and hopefully erasing his worry at this getting out. "Well, in the future, I'm not indestructible in the seventh circle of hell."

He pricked up at the word hell, "Ze seventh circle." She could already hear the judgment in Solomon's tone. "What were zou doing zere?"

"Someone needed a demon dead." That was where her job usually started, "and that demon was smart enough to hitch a ride with a Greater Demon, and I was stupid enough to follow."

That would be the last time that Lennie ever took the chance to do inter-dimensional travel, because she was now learning that her indestructible Adamas skin did not hold so well in the devil's _actual_ playground. "Whatever, he's obliterated with the friend-enemy I made. Now we know some Realms just don't like my angelic rock, and I might be exiled from some too, but that should be kept on the down-low."

"What iz zis?" Solomon's _oldness_ was showing, _"Friend-enemy?"_

"Yeah, he was like 'worship me mortal'." Lennie dropped herself on the couch with a drawn-out sight, after she moved some of the boxes, and placed them to carefully to the side so Sol wouldn't scream his lid once more. "And I was like no, not today Satan. Our friendship was dead when he dropped me off at the Métro."

"Greater Demons." Solomon sniffed in that racist warlock voice he would use. "Zeir arrogance knows no bounds," he said before going back to his potions and gadgets strewn across his living room. He was in the process of adding some other fancy tool to his growing plethora of a Downworld hoarder's delight, but thought better and just made it disappear altogether. "I'd have told zou that. How did zou get in here anyways?"

"I heard this story about a girl that grew up on the black market after her mother sold her as a baby for drugs. She was the German and Soviet underground now, and supposedly she is doing pretty well for herself, have you heard of this Solomon?"

"You're stalling." He had not been paying attention to a thing Lennie had just said. "How did zou get past my enchantments? I _doobled_ zem since the last time zou broke in."

She was glad he had noticed that at least. "You caught me." Lennie moves the hair from her wound, not wanting to dirty her hair too. "Your mother let me in."

"I knew it." Solomon gets up, his knees cracking, and his eight-year old body looks a bit ridiculous in the grown-up V-neck and designer jeans. He ruffles his pink hair, and his purple skin has this glow around his cheeks. "I told her time and time again that everyone is impersonating you, letting in another mercenary iz dangerous. I've told her not to let people in wizout giving me ze time to inspect first."

"But it was cold outside." Lennie pouted. "And she was making breakfast."

He gave a long sigh, rubbing his darkening purple face, and Lennie wondered if he knew how intelligent his mother really was. "What did zou promise her to get in zere?"

Lennie took out the piece of chicken-sandwich that she had stuffed in her pocket, "that we would try this again."

Solomon Ash glared daggers at the offered meal in her hand, his rib-cage so much more prominent when he stretched his back like he was doing now. He was one of those people sat for so long in once hunched position that they were sure to ruin their back. Lennie was convinced if he wasn't still in a kid's body he would have got a hunchback for leaning over his work for hours on end.

He rubbed his rib-cage. "Zou know it won't work. We've already tried everything Lennie."

"We still can try." She hoped that he would try it again, for his mother, and partly for her.

He did try.

The moment Lennie put the sandwich in Sol's hand, it turned to ash, the back particles slipping through his suddenly lax fingers, and landed in a too perfect pile of black ash before him.

"I'm sorry Solomon- "

"Don't." He didn't even look at the pile of ash, instead he ceremoniously went to pick up the cobweb dustpan and broom. He only used it for occasions like this. "I don't want to try zis again."

"We won't." Lennie watched him throw it away in the empty trashcan, out of sight and out of mind.

"I mean it Lennie." Solomon wasn't quick enough to wipe the tear that dropped down his cheek, so foreign on his no-nonsense face that it quickly changed her mind of trying again as well. "I don't want to keep hoping that this curse will end one day. I don't want to keep my mother's hopes up. She has dealt with zis for seven hundred years, I'm _teered_ of this, and I know she is too."

"I know." Lennie growled at the shadow of the Greater Demon that had cursed the once eight-year old warlock Solomon Ash. The demon had cursed him to live as a child, a life without food ever touching his mouth, and adding his mother live out that immortal sentence. Just to watch her son suffer. "One day we'll get him Solomon."

"Zou could try," he remarked just as coldly.

"I will." That incredibly sadistic demon was in for a world of hurt when Lennie found him, and perhaps she could do it sooner if Solomon ever had the balls to fess up the name of the fucker. Her boss' pride to finish the job himself was worse than his tinkering addiction.

Lennie finally noticed something. It was abnormally quiet in his room. "Hey Sol, where is Maria?"

He waved his hand in dismissal at the very mention of their competition's head mistress, _Madame Maria Claude_. The werewolf female was a self-made mercenary during the 70's, and after last year she had reached a bit too far for Solomon's taste. He had abducted her and kept in the corner of the room since last April, bribing her wolf mercenary employees with finishing easy jobs, and basically running her good name into ruin.

Maria Claude's absence now meant she had run out of her use to Solomon. He rarely kept anything that he didn't need.

"You killed her?"

He didn't have to say it.

Solomon's child-like face was pinched in the same way when some gadget or instrument of his mind didn't turn out like he wanted it to. "Well she did publicly accuse me of stealing her clients. So, she had it coming, and ze got on my mother's nerves, so it was a _win win_ scenario."

Lennie had always been curious. "Did you steal her network?"

"Of course, I did." There was the Solomon smirk she that had first won her over, "now I have another target for zou, a vampire in New Orleans is trying to get back at his Maker. He wants it done by ze end of the week-

"Sure Sol. Where can I find him?"

Just another day as one of France's high-ranking assassins.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

Lennie steps into the charming café she went to on her days off, and spots the _Jessica Rabbit_ in human flesh sitting on the bar stools. "Hey Charlotte!"

The half-Fae boy sitting next her human friend gets up and leaves. "Oh Derrick, sit back down! She's not going to hurt you!" Charlotte groans in her hands as her mystery lover leaves through the same door a smug Lennie opens it for him.

Her overtly sexualized friend is pissed as Lennie takes her lover's empty seat. "Good morning, who was that?"

"You know Lennie," she doesn't answer. "The saddest things about betrayal," she nursed her drink in sorrow. "Is that it never comes from your enemies."

"You're all poetic today, why?" Lennie could take a guess as she swirled playfully on the stool. "Were you trying to get laid?"

"It wasn't just that." Charlotte went into her purse to apply more lipstick to her already ruby red lips, her cheeks and eyes all done up, and far too dramatic for a classy woman. Good. Lennie found classy people boring. Charlotte crossed her stiletto feet. "He was nice to me. For once, I was not the only one trying to have a decent conversation."

Lennie scoffed. "He ditched you because he saw who your friends were? That's not betrayal, that's being a pussy." Lennie leaned her arms over the bar, cracking her tense shoulders from last night's chase through London, and then cocked her head in speculation. "I thought you were into dick, not pussies? Do you have something to tell me Charlotte?"

Charlotte, far superior with emotional control, slapped her little make-up mirror. "Why is everything about _fucking_ with you?"

Lennie shrugged, "what else is there?"

"You're a twisted person." Charlotte called the bartender over to them, and they got a round on Lennie for ruining her chance at playing cougar and the sexy Fae Prince.

"That's what makes me so much fun." Lennie waved her wad of hundred-euro bills under Charlotte's nose, and she swiped it away in her grumpy mood. "Cheer up Charlotte, there will be plenty more sexy Fae males tonight, besides it's a nice day, and getting all pissy on me isn't going to change that."

"It was better before you came."

"Isn't it always."

It was a bright frosty morning in downtown Paris. This was one of the more seedier cafés of the south side of the Sainte Chapelle. The pavement glistened like carpet of crushed diamonds in the early morning sunshine, and the October wind was blowing through the hairs of passerbys that walked without a care in the world.

They both sat at the window seat of the bartender's stools, looking out into the come and go of mopeds and compact cars that fit one or two eco-friendly mundanes, and the tourists that gawked at the sights of a place she had now recently found to be her home more than anywhere.

"At least we could have some peace from their honking and chattering in here." Charlotte remarked to Lennie. She was right, the sound was eliminated in this Downworld friendly café, and Lennie kept the hood over her head so it could stay that way.

It wasn't long before Charlotte was back in a good mood. Her friend pointed out, "you want to know what's my motto?" Lennie sipped her Japanese plum wine, letting Charlotte finish talking herself back into that woman that she partied with in the night hours. She would need her tonight. She stated flippantly, "well, in our line of work there is only one motto that matters."

Lennie jumped on that. "Fuck them up before they fuck you?"

"Very funny Lennie," she tipped her drink and swallowed it whole. As she leaned back Lennie got a glimpse of Charlotte's forearms, stripped of her angelic runes, and now inked with the kills she had made on the job. There was thirty little lines that marred it now.

A smug part of Lennie knew she would need both arms to count her kills, but the thing about Charlotte was it was never about competition with her. Perhaps that is why Lennie had stayed friends with the exiled shadowhunter for so long. _Come to think of it_ … Charlotte was her only true friend. On the other hand, Sol was her boss, and bosses couldn't be friends as he put it one time. Lennie rubbed her temple as she ruminated what that meant for her future relationships.

"The thing about us," Charlotte was convinced, or it might be the alcohol talking. "Is that you should hustle until you no longer have to introduce yourself. Take yourself."

"Every night." Lennie winked at the Fae bartender that walked over to them after serving a couple of vampires vacationing from the States. He had snow white hair, white teeth, and dark eyes with no pupils whatsoever. Three things that were turning her incredibly on right now. She wouldn't mind going into the broom cupboard and finish the sex they were having with their eyes.

"Don't be disgusting Lennie. We aren't talking about you pleasuring yourself, we're talking a _woman's_ reputation." Charlotte continued, snapping her attention away. "I mean it, everyone knows _Red-Handed Lennie,_ but does anyone know _Charming Lottie_?" Lennie made a face at the name Charlotte had chosen for herself. "I rest my case."

"Did you give yourself that name?" Lennie mentioned off-hand, "because I never picked the name I was given." Charlotte sat in silence, confirming her suspicions. "That's half the battle of being remembered. If it's a name everyone gives you, then naturally everyone's going to remember it. Besides your old as dirt _Charming Lottie._ Who gives a damn what people think of you now?"

"I'm not old." She flipped her shiny red hair over her shoulder. "I am thirty-five."

"Old for this business." Lennie corrected Charlotte's pissy face, "I'm twenty, and even now I feel like I'm getting too old for breaking necks and then sleeping on Sol's old ass couch."

"Oh please, the moment your old," Charlotte smacked her perfect luscious lips, and tinked her own glass of wine to Lennie's own, "is when I'm a sack of lard and bones."

"You drink wine at… ten o'clock in the morning. That's the definition of old," Lennie smirked at a Charlotte that was getting tipsier by the moment. "But I can't complain, I just enable you, so fuck it, let's keep enjoying ourselves." Lennie turned in her seat after toasting to getting fucked over and under the night to come.

Charlotte dipped back her drink, swallowing, "I'll take another round."

"I'm sure you can," Lennie teased her friend, giving her first look-over of the room, and frowned at whom she saw in the very back. They were fucked.

She muttered so only Charlotte could hear. "Wolf henchman twelve o'clock. Looks like one of Juan's' boys."

"Fuck." Charlotte tipped her last drink back, swallowing it whole before she too twirled on her seat as if she was too drunk to function, and in the process getting a look too. "wasn't that Maria's old man?"

" _Was_." Lennie gave an apologetic look at the bartender that she now ruined her chance with, and still motioning for him to come over. "Hey man, take this," Lennie gave the handsome Fae the hundred thousand euros, and secured it into his warm hand, "and get everyone out of here."

The new bartender smirked at how _much_ she had given him, _"I-uh. Thanks, but isn't this a bit too much?"_

"Take her word, empty this place," Charlotte said, opening her jacket, and revealing the two seraph blades that gleamed at the ready. His black eyes widened in alarm, "things are about to get ugly."

The Fae bartender, or as Lennie liked to now call him _Rico Sauvé_ , had the gall to wink at her again after the tense moment. "Only if s _he_ promises me a date?"

Charlotte and Lennie twirled back with their eyebrows raised.

"I'm about to _trash_ your place." Lennie stressed the word, even when the blue-eyed Fae boy still had guts to still make the magic happen. She had expected less of him, and she was rarely surprised by bartenders that usually served coffee and tea rather than alcohol. "And you still want to do this now?"

He nodded all the same, some of the green hair falling in his daring eyes. "Is there a better time?"

"I like this guy Charlotte. He has balls." Lennie lowered her eyes over the bar's counter. "Sexy balls."

"Then you're going to love this guy," Charlotte whispers, raising one long leg over the other, and revealing hero own Adamas twin blades tucked into her waist at the werewolf that rose from his seat, and then Lennie's sexy Fae began calling for everyone to get out as Juan's henchman made their move.

"Lennie Highsmith," the werewolf came stalking forward, showing off his badge, two of the people sitting the corner were lupine in their strides too as they joined him. "You are under arrest for the mass murder of fifteen Praetor guardsmen of the German Institute- "

"Oh goodie, Praetors Lupus!" Charlotte celebrated. "I was wondering when your old farts would show up!" She piped up as if this was a type of old lady Christmas for her.

The Praetor guard appraised Charlotte for a moment, taking out a device that scanned her too, and then reading off it, "and Charlotte Penrose, you are under arrest for the murder of Gabriella Jimenez of the Praetor Institute in Argentina."

Charlotte squealed. "They still got that in the files! I'm not that old!" She stuck her tongue out at an exasperated Lennie. "Oh, come on, let me proud of this for once."

"Are you done?"

Lennie didn't wait as her skin turned to Adamas, and she attacked the three Praetor guards that were apparently not Juan's young blooded men, _do-gooders_ , and so the experienced alliance of werewolves put up a bit more of a fight then she had first anticipated.

The building collapsed on what was left of them, and Charlotte and Lennie had to make a run from the Verlac Aunt and nephew shadowhunter family of Paris, until they lost them in the sewers.

There were always hungry demons down there, and Lennie had more practice with them than the snobbish Verlac shadowhunter family did on their best days. It would have been a perfect escape if Charlotte had not vomited all over her dress as they hid in a hole filled with crawling critters.

Charlotte looked down at her devastated dress as she walked the sewer line. She looked out of place in this dark place, and she made no effort to hide it. She smacked her ruined red lips, "why is it that I always ruin my dress when I go out with you?"

"Because you suck at getting drunk." Lennie growled as her head hit a hanging sewage pipe, feeling like she was dead on her feet was not a safe option on the job, she had one shoe missing, and a good chunk of hair missing too, but she fought the fatigue. Her body may remain untouched and unsinged but that didn't mean the fights didn't leave their toll for her to get captured.

Somehow, they made it back to the motel Charlotte was currently staying at.

She fiddled with her door, and banged into it with her shoulder, revealing a dark room, a man's underwear hanging off the bed and her mess of makeup still out from the morning. "Well, I'm too tired to go out tonight," she declared as if it was ever a possibility, "so no partying for me."

"Huh." Lennie made a little bet, "How much am I going to have to spend for you to change your mind?" Lennie reached to her back-pocket glad that at least her wad of cash hadn't fallen out from fuckery they had gotten up to the Praetor's blood hounds and the Clave's bullies.

"I wouldn't go partying even if you paid me." Charlotte collapsed on her bed, not even daring to clean herself.

"You sourpuss." Lennie took the shower first, and then like a good friend she dragged Charlotte in too and hosed the bitch down.

If Charlotte was pissed before, she was furious now, shaking from the cold stream that Lennie always preferred over the hot.

Lennie wrung out her hair, and put on the clean sweater to match the clean clothes she had stolen from one of Charlotte's neighbor's as they went out for the day. Charlotte was a tall bitch, and it would have been a battle to be swallowed in clothes that just didn't fit right. "See you around Charlotte." She saluted her friend. "We should do this again!"

"Like hell we are ever doing that again." She put a slab of meat over her swelling eye. Out of the two of them, she always ended up looking the worse. "You are going back to Sol's?"

"Don't I always," Lennie couldn't remember the last time she had not crashed at Solomon's. It was getting old. Killing. Crashing at Sol's. Killing. Drinking it up with Lottie. Same old day in and day out, she walked out on Charlotte, not in the mood to stay long enough to have a decent conversation without drinks.

"Lennie, where you really going to Sol's? You're not going to stay up? You look dead!"

"Thanks, _Charming Lottie_." She kept walking.

"Lennie!" Charlotte had to yell at her to wake her from the sad daydream of having a life that didn't revolve around the same people and the same blood crust under her fingers.

"Yeah, I'll head straight to Sol's." Lennie pulled her jacket around her neck as she climbed down the stairs, her friend waiting at the door as if she had to watch her go. "Call me if you need anything!"

She took her phone out, perhaps dialing that lover of hers. "Sure girl, take care you animal."

Lennie pretended to have claws as she hoped off the cheap ass stairs of the motel. _"Rowr."_

"You're crazy Lennie."

That was the least of her problems.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

Lennie walked out into the parking lot, and across the hoodlum riddled Parisian streets.

She doubled back a few times, crawling under and over chain link fences, just for the sheer pleasure of losing any hunters on the prowl, and saving her an eternity of dealing with resurrecting more bad blood. The last thing she needed was to get into bed with the gangs or bodies of governments that wanted to gawk at the revelry of her difference. Those who wanted to use her Adamas strength and invisibility to further their own gain, and rip her to shreds when they learned what they needed.

This life that she lived, killing for Sol to protect her own while she slept. In this agreement, she was free to fuck, eat, and dance away the cash that leaked through her fingers. Yet, at the end of the day she felt cheated because the drive to understand every piece of information she got from those that remembered was never enough to compose the truth of what stole her memories in the first place… _it was a never-ending clusterfuck._

As she made it into Sol's neighborhood, the survival hunch kicked in. "Shit."

In a matter of seconds, she brought up Azriel to defend her neck, her skin hardened into Adamas rock, and she braced herself for the impact of her enemy. She cursed the attacker. "Fuck you."

The attacker's seraph blade came inches from her neck, it glinted under the fluorescent light, and the dark unyielding eyes of Jonathan Morgernstern stared down into hers.

Lennie gritted her teeth at the strength he put into bringing down his seraph blade for a death blow that would never happen. She held herself from ducking, and slipping her blade under the lower part of his ribs. "I'm trying to be polite Jon, but if you move that a centimeter closer to me I will tear you apart."

He smirked, and then the pressure was gone, the seraph blade was gone too, and Lennie had him by the throat in retaliation.

They slammed against the concrete wall, shaking the foundation of the building, he groaned out as his gorgeous white-haired head whiplashed against it, but his devilish smile remained through it all.

"Hello Lennie," his voice brought her back. The furious red left her vision. She had turned into a bloodthirsty _pitbull_ after the countless fights she had been put in. Lennie had to remind herself that Jon was far more fragile than he let on. Shadowhunter. Angelic blood and purpose, but still human flesh and bone nevertheless.

For some reason she would forget with the massive ego he dragged around with him. "What the hell was that for? Why did you attack me?"

"I had to be sure it was you."

She released him, he rubbed his neck, and she sighed in frustration.

"Well, are you convinced?"

He shrugged, "you sound like yourself."

"How do I know it's you?" Lennie felt herself grimace, as she dusted the dirt off her knees. "Because the Jonathan I got a coffee with wouldn't try to hack me to bits? Or is that how you say hello to your friends?"

His eyes were cold and lifeless as he started at Lennie. "You have no idea who I am do you? Do you honestly believe I waste my time with _pleasantries_? That I'd waste breath on… _friends?"_

"My hunch tells me, you have less friends than me." Lennie put away Azriel. "Which is saying something because I only have one really good one. Bet you got information on her too?"

She had not expected him to repeat it. "Charlotte Penrose. Thirty-five. Lives on Green Ave. Refused to kill a demon she fell in love with and got her Marks stripped from her. You have coffee in a café that burned down today, and the you managed to shake off the Verlacs from catching you both, before that you had a nasty run in the Praetors, but something tells me they will learn not to send pent-up lackeys."

"They were fun." Lennie shrugged, "ruined my date with a bartender, but they were fun."

His eyes flashed with something that she did not catch. "You have been a very busy girl."

"Wait for it." Lennie turned away from the direction to Sol's apartment. She would have to shake Jonathan too before she went there, didn't want to have her stalker knowing where she currently was living, "the day isn't over Jonathan. Plenty of people to kill."

"Oh, don't I know it," he caught up to Lennie, taking strides with her. "I killed three woman that were pretending to be you. Do you know how annoying that gets?"

"Almost as bad as being impersonated I am sure. What is this?" She stopped in her tracks, and he had to do so too.

"What? What's wrong now? Do we have someone following us?" He misinterpreted her flustered nerves, and she growled at his blank look when he found no viable attack impeding their path. Paris was eerie at night; some streets so empty even ghosts did not lurk. Tonight, with him here, it was like the sun was still illuminating everything around her in energy, an energy only she could see.

"Don't you see it." She flicked her finger between them both, at the delightful electric tug of war that seemed to happen when they were near one another. "What is going on here? What is this?"

 _"_ _What?"_ His face didn't move a muscle.

"You have got to be kidding me," she stalked on, aggravated with his inability to see how hard he was making this.

He was giving her a million-reason to want to tap that very fine ass, and get a chance to see how big his guns were to play with. At the same time, he was playing a nun to Church Valentine with a chastity belt wrapped so tight around his waist she was sure his balls would be cut by the end of it all. She knew that if he was playing Valentine's game, then Jonathan was sent just to taunt her into submission. If his _bad daddie_ knew it or not, his character seemed to be more of a prude than Solomon, and that was saying something when her boss was stuck in the body of an eight-year old punk.

She wasn't surprised that Jonathan followed her. He was a curious one, perhaps that would be enough to push him from his lone wolf game. "Are you trying to fix my problems Jonathan? Trying to get me to like you?"

"No. Never." Lennie grinned when his voice broke. "I have enough to deal with in my own life."

"Then why don't you let us get on with it- oh, look!" She tugged on his arm, getting an irritated look from him, and he didn't push her off which was a point in the right direction. "I like this place. They have good hot chocolate. Let's get something to eat here." They sharply turned the corner to the stairs leading into _La Tabla Rasa_.

He opened the door into her favorite café she hadn't frequented in years, and as they slapped their wet combat boots on the welcome mat, they both took off their scarves and coats and put them on the beg. "I got it." She had the pleasure of seeing the muscles of his abdomen as he reached up with his tippy toes to put her coat on the peg above his.

She turned away when his dark eyes met hers after righting his black V-neck sweater. "Thanks Jon."

"You're welcome."

They sat in a booth in the back.

Her favorite place in this midnight open café, they were the only customers, and the owner gave them some space after she looked over to him, "let's get some things straight," she folded her napkin into a triangular piece. "I can handle myself. I don't need Prince Charming to come in and save me. I get the job done all by myself? Do you have a problem with that, or are you going to keep hunting down my doppelgangers?"

"No, I know you do." He smirked as if there was a joke there. "I'll behave myself."

"Then stop helping me," or _bothering me_ _or smirking at me like you can see my underwear_. _Being a_ _fucking_ _pussytease_. "Remember we aren't a team." She shot right back at him. Tucking her arms into the crevices of her elbows, rubbing the loose fabric there. "So, say what you have to say and get on with it. Some of us need our sleep."

He leaned over the table, his face suddenly inches from her, his scent of mint and sandalwood enveloping her. _"Beauty sleep?"_

"Something like that." She felt her eyes zone in on his mouth.

"You don't need it." He flirted.

Those words did nasty things to her belly, worse things to her mind.

Lennie bit her lip, her horny side deciding to show up. "Maybe we could find a place to crash together?"

 _"_ _Hm."_

She took that as her own invitation, pushing her arms forward as he rubbed his lips in those infuriating strokes. She dared to lean forward to those lovely lips. Her toes curled at how long this had been postponed _… only to have the Jon lean away as she did._

He repeated to lean coyly away as she tried for her kiss. His breath fanning over her frustrated face. "What is going on here? What are your planning Lennie Highsmith?"

She hoped to cut his questions off with that kiss, but he leaned too far away for it to even be possible. _Fucking pussytease._

It was no use being toyed with when he obviously could care less. Lennie relinquished the space between them, leaning back in her own seat like a good girl. "To not die. That's my only plan." That was the first and most important of many rules she followed. She had to keep the scowl off her lips and yet it still came. "To keep doing what I'm doing until I can't do it anymore."

"You can't expect to be doing this for another twenty years?" He had the audacity to sound surprised, as if he had given this some thought. "What after then? You can't retire from a job like this." Jonathan smirked as if he found the thought amusing.

Lennie enjoyed his intellectual breakthrough. "You're right." He was all too right. Well that just killed the erotic mood she had been trying to get him into, but she couldn't doubt his rationality. "I don't plan on retiring. There is only one-way people like us to end up." She didn't need to spell it out for him, he was smart enough, probably too smart for his own good. Not taking advantage of a bit of fun when it was offered, he was going to lose a lot of pussy like that. Lennie drank the rest of the hot chocolate, not so much in the mood for having fun anymore.

He egged her on. His eyes mirthful at seeing her so upset at the prospect of the far-off retirement. "What about tonight? What about his week? What are your short-term goals?"

"Oh, that's easy. Next, I plan to get rid of you."

"Will you?" His eyes quickly scanned her and saw that he had finally noticed the predicament. That she was ready bolt. His eyes lit up like wildfire and a predatory smile spread across his face. "You won't get very far."

She rose to the challenge. "Oh yes I will."

He chuckled, and glanced around the room. Marking the exit perhaps. "Is that a challenge?"

"Apparently, you just like _fucking with me_ ," Lennie shrugged as if it didn't strike her as odd. She was guilty of doing that to her friends, especially Solomon. There was no point in being hypocritical, but to sexually frustrate someone… that was pushing a bit too far, "and not in the way I would prefer if you get my meaning."

"Oh, I'm sorry." He folded his arms into the crevices of his elbows, as if the proposition had never been offered before. "Did I come across as that?"

 _Did he?_ Lennie wanted to laugh her ass off. Of course, he did. Every bone in her body sung to jump his arrogant ass. He knew it, he had to, and she was guessing he like playing with his meals, _or…_

Lennie chuckled at thought. "You never told me that you preferred men to woman Jonathan? I'm a bit put out. Why is it that all the good one's change sides? I swear it's a crying shame honestly to us single ladies."

His eyes lit up brighter than before and he belted out a laugh that most assuredly wasn't any normal laughter a young man should make.

It reminded her once of a Greater Demon howling in victory. Unabashed in his provocative devilish nature. Lennie did not like that one bit and her stomach did a somersault. Despite his dark energy… _the eager smile that was left on his lips was heavenly…_ angel and demon she decided. Dark and light. Lennie was so torn to his character, and she guessed that was just what you got with Jonathan Morgernstern.

He nudged his finger across her knuckles, the same one that had rubbed against his lips so many times she had forgotten how many. "You are so delightful Lennie. I just want to slice you up, and take you to go."

Lennie was taken into the brief misperception once more, he was so damn confusing. "So that's a yes or a no…"

"I don't have a problem with woman Lennie, and they hardly have a problem with me." He licked his gums at the thought, and then smiled warmly as the waitress came to ask if they needed anything. "Nothing darling. You look lovely by the way." He drawled again in that false voice that alarmed Lennie more than his dark energy. He was trying to make a point.

After making the waitress turn into a puddle of love goo, Lennie had to speak up.

"Why do you do that?" She scrubbed her bare arm. There was no blood there now, but a memory itching on her memory reminded her that in the very near future there would be. Her skin felt wrong clean, especially before him. "Why do act like this?"

"Do what?"

"Give me whiplash with your _bi-polar-ness_. Are you an unstoppable sociopath that shoots babies for fun or are you this polite double agent that is possibly trying to kill me to get your daddy's good graces, or… do you honestly not know what the hell you are doing? Because if you are trying to confuse the hell out of me than you are doing a-"

His hand moved to grab the top of her shirt, and pulled it forward. Jonathan closed the distance between them as his lips landed on Lennies' surprised pout. It was the last thing she expected, but then again, she didn't push away either. She felt his hand move from her shirt to the back of her head, to pull her closer, and the table between them digged into her abdomen, but he was a tall fucker so he leaned some more to make up for the space.

"Wait." She left his lips.

"No." His growl was deep and course, so unlike him. For once Jon was impatient as his mouth shadowed her top lip, as if he was about to say _mine_ or something chauvinistic like that.

"Let me get closer," Lennie reasoned, and he weakened his grip so she could walk around to his side of the table, to have all of him, and continuing in their abrupt yet passionate assault.

Lennie reached up as he reached to her, and she settled her hand over his chest, his heart was wild under her hand.

In the public space of the café, she closed her eyes and just felt his lips come on top of hers.

In a hurried hunger, the kiss was hard at first but deepened as they both leaned into it. She felt him pull him her even closer and the kiss became more driving as she ended up on his lap. His lips were warm against her own. There was a nip at her lower

lip and then a nash of teeth as her hands caught in the hair she had been dying to touch since the first time in that Barcelona alleyway.

"Please stop it!" It was the waitress. She had been making noises of discontent through the whole raw moment, and only now did Jonathan and Lennie pulled back and yet his mouth still lingered near hers, for once rubbing his thumb against her lips as he had done so many times with his.

They could have been in a different world. Lennie focused on his moving lips. "Is that answer enough for you _Lennie darling_?"

When she stubbornly went back to her seat, he was kind enough to draw his hand up and down her arm. A soothing motion, like his tongue had felt against her teeth, and it sent shivers that curled her toes in sweet anticipation.

"Jon." Saying his name was enough to break the lust heavy trance, but not erase it, she was afraid it would be impossible to do so now.

He took his arm back, relinquishing his momentary lapse of control, and his cold persona slipping back into place once more. "I like to keep this professional."

"I wondered when _bi-polar_ would show up again." Lennie took his hot chocolate, sipping the cold thing, and not in the mood to see it left unattended for so long. She would play his game. "Why the sudden change? Are you are going to develop feelings for me?" She teased.

"No. You will." He sounded so sure. As if that was the reason, perhaps the main reason why he was not going to continue in this delightful development from her dour days.

She scoffed. "Wanna bet?" Lennie knew he was going to pay handsomely for those words. He had no chance when it came to her prowess, and what happened before was evidence of that. She was still smug that he had been the one to initiate their first. "Just watch, you're going to be so whipped in two months. I'm going to have to put a restraining order on your ass just to keep you away."

He stood from his chair but did not step forward. He glanced around the room once more, as if he was deciding on what to say, and those intense dark eyes landed on her. "That filthy tongue of yours is going to get you in trouble."

Lennie licks her lips. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Oh no." His voice was low, almost breathless. "you don't mean that."

"Try me." She swallowed as she struck the match, his dark eyes turning into fire and fury. So much emotion that is was incredible that she didn't burst into flames right there.

He made bold steps toward her, his outstretched hand burning a single touch up her forearm. "Come with me."

Lennie's mouth felt dry as she nodded, striking the match in her belly, "okay."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

* * *

After ten minutes of a brisk pace of the getting through the _Terrasse de Feuillants_ , they were heading to _his_ place.

Apparently, Jonathan had been in the city for some time, and he this showed as he expertly weaved through the bright lights of cars and strode past street lanterns that shined like stars in the heart of historical Paris. These lights of crystal hew shined overhead as they strode like gang members on search for their rivals.

Lennie could not believe his eagerness as they sharply turned corners.

Jon was fire-cracker ready to explode. She could feel it coming off him with waves, feel it thrumming through his fingers as they held hers.

In retrospect, this was probably the first night she was not worried about danger that lurked around every corner. The first night that she was not worried about what Solomon would think about her not showing up. Not worried that perhaps the diabolical Valentine Morgernstern was waiting for her at Jon's apartment like the dark mastermind that she had heard so much about.

Instead, she was focused entirely on the person leading her. _Jon._ Just Jon. She followed closely behind him, holding his hand, as if it was her sole duty to keep him so.

They were in the far more expensive part of Paris.

She had not expected for him to be so _très chic_.

So… _cat-like._ Some males were downright dogs, but Jon seemed to be a mixture of the both, a chameleon of the two when it served him best. When he needed his calm and confident persona, he became task-orientated, just as he had been with taking down Jarvis' friends. In that form, he had been a bloodhound, but now, his grace, posture, and so French flair for superiority to the desk clerk of the _Le Meurice_ she thought he could be a tiger… muscle and elegance mixed into one body. "This is it."

"What?" She had been lost after they turned on the Rue de Ravioli street of elegance and pomp prestige of the upper class, that she had almost forgotten that he had never released her hand. "I'm sorry what?"

His eyebrows came together, as he nodded to the door. She had just now made him aware that he had in fact lost her to her daydreaming mind. "This is me."

"You have got to be joking me?" Lennie teased. "You live here?" They were in a far fancier hotel than the sort of motels Charlotte bought into, or the flats Solomon isolated himself and mother to. In places like those. In seedy motels like that, they could have chosen to spend their time in an alley like the one back where they first met, he was warm enough for the things they could still do in the dark shadowed alleyway, and yet he brought her here.

"Does it bother you?"

"No." She disagreed quickly. But of course, it bothered her. To come to this lavish opulence that made her squirm in how uncomfortable she would feel to have Charlotte or Solomon see her now. She did not belong here. He made no mention of it, acting as if it was natural to spend a night in a room where only people of great influence and wealth would stay in.

"Come in, it's not permanent so don't worry. It'll do for tonight." He said as he was opening the front door, "Unless you have a better idea?" She was tempted to pull him back out, suggest they go to somewhere less fancy, and possibly a place where he could touch that very sexy butt of his in public, and not get a disdainful glare from a duchess of whatever province duchesses came from.

"No, it's fine."

"Good." He moved into the room, releasing her hand, and getting away before she could suggest otherwise.

It was a three-room apartment, and the expensively decorated rooms was a mess to be honest. There were take-out boxes, milk cartons, and trash all over the sofas. The floor was worse off than Salmon's place, instead of mechanical magical junk, there was stains of various shades, clothes and battle gear thrown as if a maid was going to pick it all up, and to top it off, someone had put a bloody hand to one of the walls. It should have bothered her, but instead she went up to sniff it… it wasn't blood, the color was off, _what could it be?_ And that mystery bothered her more than this place looking like a murder scene.

He seemed to relax in the disorder of it all. She smirked at his audacity for mayhem. "Like what you did to the place."

"I didn't get to-" He caught Lennie's knowing smirk, and then started unbuttoning his black shirt. "Let me get you something to drink." He offered her going to the kitchen.

She was curious to what he thought was a _drink_. "Sure."

As she circled the trashed room, she ruminated over the fact that she had not expected him to be courteous, his attitude, this mess, his aggressive kiss at the café, Lennie had expected him to be the type of guy that shoved her against the door and fucked her before offering her anything to drink. Like all things Jonathan, she prepared herself to be surprised. Made life a bit fun to have him around.

Before she got the chance to roam for his secret stash of weapons, he is back pouring champagne for Lennie, and she sat in smug stillness on his king-sized bed so she could hear his courteous word she would probably never have the pleasure of hearing again.

"A toast." He proposed, and Lennie raised her glass to hear him say. "To a woman that always keeps me guessing."

Jon was still smiling as she gulped hers whole, and it was making her feel things she had never felt before. He looked so happy, so relaxed withering on sleepiness, and she could see it in his eyes. Lennie was not accustomed to seeing them like that, so lax and content instead of the coldness he had showed her the first day they had met in Barcelona. "To not dying." He clinked her glass.

There was no amount of calculation in his words, but just a hint of careful manipulation, it was just like him. Lennie smiled at that and he drew her close to him.

He spoke quietly over the sound of the cars honking, ambulances blaring, and the hotel's guest above them making a racket. A party perhaps, maybe they could join them, and then he stole her attention once more, his persona filling up the room. "You're not going to kill me in my sleep, are you?"

She chuckled at his false worry, and would leave him guessing. "Let's toast to not dying." Lennie exhaled softly, "at least not tonight." The second drink went down smoother than the first, she was feeling a rush of pleasant calm come over her as he drank her toast too.

She went to fill her and his once more. "And to my handsome stranger," it felt odd claiming him as her own, but he didn't object to it. In fact, he leaned back on his arm, daring a wink that seemed so unlike him that she had to add, "a charming stranger that learned how to bend me to a T." She congratulated him, "the man who has apparently stolen my sanity," for how would she ever trust him enough to get this close, well she was still grappling with the reason why, and apparently having a problem with telling him or herself _no_ , "and I hope that I don't come to regret this."

"You too, Lennie." Instead of rolling her back on the bed, and rutting like the animals she had only fantasized, and how she had been dying to do with him since the first kiss, he instead gave her a tour of the small space. "Kitchen. Bathroom."

"Lovely," she noticed how filthy she kept it, and it seemed so like him to not give a shit, literally of how disgusting he could be.

"My room." They returned once more. At the end of the incredibly short tour, they went to the only window at back of his room, and looked out at the street below. The killers in them seemed to be unsatisfied with **_not_** watching the street like bloodhounds in search of predators, and they did so until their glasses were drained, and the bottle that had been supplying them.

As her senses began to dull, Lennie's eyes caught on a few shelves in the corner. Texts and scrolls that had demonic language on them, and some she could guess he had stolen for his own research. _On what could he be researching?_ Lennie did not have the barest clue.

"Do you like it?" He asked, walking towards Lennie that was reading through the titles. She smirked.

"If I could read the demonic language," she gave up on trying to find out what the words meant. "That would have saved my ass on a few trips I made to the underworld."

"You mean you've been to Hell?"

"Tomato, tomato." Something surprising caught her eye. "Well what is this? Pride and Prejudice?" she exclaimed, looking back at him as if this was tipping point for a psychopath like him. "You read Jane Austen?" Jon almost blushed at her declaration.

 _"_ _Well,"_ that was the first time she had ever seen him fumble for words. "Well, didn't anyone tell you not to snoop." It was becoming obvious he had never had anyone go through his personal things before, and would not do so after she was done with him.

"No need to be embarrassed Jonathan." Lennie tapped her lips, "your secrets safe with me."

"That's my fathers' collection."

That struck her as even more strange, almost as if someone was trying to pull a joke. "So, the most infamous shadowhunter in history reads… _romance novels_." Jon nodded with no ounce of shame, well her mind was officially blown now.

He noticed as a small joyous smile grew on her lips. "What's wrong with that?" Jonathan put it back with the other ancient works of literature, and led her back near the end where she couldn't judge his father and him even more.

"Nothing." Lennie wrapped her hands over his shoulders, tickling the back of his ears, "nothing at all."

He took a step forward until their lips were centimeters apart, "Jon are you okay?"

"I knew you were different, from the first time I saw you, and even then, I tried to hate you."

Lennie froze in his arms, the tone far too malicious for their breezy conversation she had been settling into, and he still held her tight as her body responded to his bi-polar swap. He was the anaconda, honestly that is how she felt, and he was finally squeezing the life from his prey. He felt her tense up at the sudden issues. "Just listen, I kept telling myself to hate you but when I think of how well you understand your nature," he thankfully expanded, releasing what had obviously been bothering him, "to conquer and take, how you relish in your difference from those that worry about the order of this world, and the stability of the next, you never wasted any time on any of it," it was as if he hadn't seen anything so precious, "and then I knew I couldn't hate you."

Now that sounded like someone was finally giving in. "I win." Lennie chuckled in glee. "Told you I would."

"This is serious." He grabbed her arms then, shook her, making her cringe and look away from him. "I should hate you, I need to hate you, it's what I was born to be, and that is why it makes this so hard." It was as if he was trying to make himself believe it, but between the two of them she knew that was too far for them now. Just a distant memory of a fear that had turned into desire, a _nd then something more…._

He repeated lowly, defeated. "But I can't. I don't understand it, and it shouldn't control me, I am not something to be controlled, not even by you, not even by my father…" he didn't expand. Lennie was beginning to understand why he was having this problem, this internal struggle to understand his place in whatever his father was planning, and what it was that he was grappling with still seemed to connect them both.

"So." She began, her voice just as low, a challenge she knew he would take in two different ways, "what are you going to do about it Jon?"

She looked up at him, half expecting him to choke the life out of her, and then she would have to kick his crazy sexy ass through the wall of his apartment. Leave a dent so big she would never get the pleasure of getting this close to him again.

His eyes kept the same intensity from the first time he had kissed her, and they searched her face now for the answer that he was still fighting to understand. Lennie was patient, because for once she could feel all of him. She could smell his scent, sandalwood and something distinctly spicy, it reminded her of a chocolate she had tried in Istanbul. She had been ever so patient these past months of dancing around the truth that he was just now getting.

At the same time, she was not patient at all. She felt like he could tear her skin and bone, and fill her with fire and blood until all she could think, smell, taste was him. Damn that first kiss had torn apart anything that she had expected him to give, and it was painful to imagine kissing anyone else like that. She was not sure she even wanted to. Not once had he asked for a relationship, never asked for too much, and at the same time she growled at how inconsistent he had been not to see how bad they both needed this.

"I'm not going to wait forever," Lennie whispered against his parted lips. It sounded like she had taken a jab to his groin, and that is when his grip tightened on her arms but only because he brought her closer to him.

Lennie sighed in joy when his lips finally kissed her again.

No longer separated from a table, a bitchy ass waitress, and only themselves to stop it now. Though now she could feel the tension in her muscles leak out, leaning into his claiming touch, her mind went blank, and all she let herself feel was his hands, lips, thighs molding against hers, and knees knocking into hers.

She reached up to hold the back of his head, and deepened the kiss.

She felt his hands move into her hair and pull on her golden curls until they were a frazzled bush in his hands. The kissing had become more heated, heavier, frantic even as he pushed her up against the wall, pushing her up into that cramped space. His hands went down her arms, down her back, sending those electric chills through her body. Lennie's hands held tight around his neck when his hands abruptly gripped the back of her thighs, lifting her up, her ass rising against the hard surface behind her, and she locked her legs around his waist.

He gripped her ass as if it had killed him not to do so, pausing in his ministrations, and she felt her body whimper at the lack of sensation.

Lennie moaned into his mouth, needing him to know, _"Jon."_

Unlike the bloody tease he had played, he made no plans to stop. Jonathan moved backwards and when he reached the bed, he turned around and bent down, laying her down on it. Far too softly, and then he was kicking off his shoes, and swiftly pulling off his dark shirt, and his pants. This was happening. _This was really happening._

 _"_ _Shit."_ Lennie giggled in glee, taking off her shirt too, and practically a kid in a candy store.

"No." His voice was deep as he kissed her again, whispering against her blushing cheeks. "Let me." His command was obeyed immediately. She got the full effects of his own naked chest, it felt like her fingers were palming a fucking bull, it was ridiculous how much muscle males could pack, and every muscle of his was at the ready, the strength behind it, damn she was going to be in a world of hurt when she got under him.

 _"_ _Lennie."_ He muttered as his muscle coiled at her finger's attention. Jonathan liked it, her appreciation, and he moaned as he bent his head down to kiss her neck as he unbuttoned her shirt, leaving her wanting of that mouth of his, and when she had enough of being patient, Lennie tugged the hairs on the nape of his neck to be kissed thoroughly in appreciation for his masculine torso that she would ravish very soon.

 _"_ _Come here."_ He kissed her tenderly for a murderer, moving to her neck to her pulse points, he moved carefully to cover her body with his, and when he leaned in on his forearms, he leaned in with all his delicious weight.

His free hand, covered in scars and weathered by holding a blade too, entangled his fingers with hers, pinning her hand next to her head. His other hand went to trace little patterns along her bra straps, and then to the actual cups themselves, not skipping a beat as he began flipping her nipples through the padding as he took his own time to admire her. She couldn't help the moan that escaped her throat at being at the center of those dark eyes' focus. As if she was a masterpiece that he was tempted to destroy or remake with his touch. She felt Jonathan smirk against her shoulder, and then his lips trailed back to her jawline.

"Lift." She did, and her shirt was off, he went for her bra straps eager to tear it off, the defiler in him turned hers on too, and Lennie tucked her legs around his waist in retaliation, and easily flipping them so he was the one on his back.

She repeated after him. "Let me." She enjoyed his surprised look she got as she reached for her own bra bringing one down slowly, and then the other, leaving the padding to still cover the last bit that he was apparently still waiting for. His eyebrows raised at her audacity to get him unawares, and how she had flipped him so easily into a place of submission. He got a peck for that adorable look that was becoming her favorite.

She brought their clasped entwined hands above their heads as the peck became something more, and then she nipped at his nose before reaching back and releasing her breasts from the constricting padding.

Instead of focusing on him, she paid her poor eager breasts some attention. She squeezed them experimentally in her hands once they were free and noticed how sore and sensitive they had come after all his touching and foreplay. Jonathan only looked up in confident fascination, appraising them, seeing how they could hardly fit in her own hands, and suddenly his hands seemed so unoccupied that she had to remind him that he had them. She reached for his hands to place them where hers once were.

 _"_ _Ugh."_ He tested their weight and buoyancy in his more than formidable hands, tested the permission she gave him, and gave a toe-curling squeeze of his own.

Lennie bit her lip, because she couldn't help but undulate on his jeaned things, and her own hands began to trace the lines and curves of his muscled abdomen once gain.

She could feel how well he was enjoying this with the growing erection that was rubbing up against her throbbing center. It sent shivers up her spine to think that only jeans and flimsy underwear separated them now.

Lennie growled before planting a hungry kiss on his lips, " _fuck Jon_."

Jon froze, and supporting his with a grip on her thighs, he breathed heavily against her shoulder. "Fuck is right."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

* * *

Lennie, in just her bottom undergarments, shifted back on the silken pillows until she was sitting comfortably against the headboard, her man-handled hair was too far to be saved now, and her nipple raised breasts were so sensitive they hurt to be watched so closely by the man that had made them so.

Jonathan was quick to kiss her, and she is wrapping her hips around him once more.

She was growing impatient, however. She broke the kiss, lightly pushing against this chest. "What?" Jonathan caught her gaze, searching.

He could see the lust there in her golden eyes and he smirked, moving to lay gentle kisses on her earlobe. With one hand he reached between them, with a long finger he moved her panties, and stroked her, playing with her little nub until she was writhing and twitching under his touch once more.

 _"_ _Jon,"_ she moaned his name like a prayer. As if he could deliver her something better than this half pleasure half pain he had dragged her through.

The smug smirk was still on his lips as she moaned for him and he knew it was time.

"Are you ready?" He asked, his voice low and sultry. Lennie was breathing huskily in his ear, and he pulled back to find her flushed as ever. Her lips red and swollen from his many kisses, utter perfection to his jealous soul. She was his now. His alone. She felt the ownership in every pour in her body, and she was more than willing to fall from her untouchable prestige.

"Yes." She whispered, nodding. Jon's smirk morphed into a smile and he leaned back from her, taking her hand, and leading it to his waistband.

"Go ahead." He gave her permission, as Lennie appraised the bulge there, trying to find what was the _right_ move here.

She was no blushing virgin, she was not frightened of him, but perhaps a bit worried about how he would react if she went straight for what she wanted. _Would he laugh and call her a whore? Would he not find her worthy of a second time? Would she disappoint him?_

Lennie growled at the frustration of caring what the hell he needed. She needed no guidance, and with a determination that was all her own, she stroked him through the fabric of his briefs.

Jon moaned and leaned into her touch, encouraging her. "Like that." Lennie's excitement only grew with every moan she elicited from him, his pleasure, no longer frightening. Suddenly Jonathan couldn't stand the expense any longer.

"Take it off." He said huskily, looking down with Lennie with lust driven eyes. Lennie's eyes went wide, and she slowly reached down to push her underwear away.

"Mine too." Lennie's eyes went wider. Never had there been a man that had told let her have so much control, and yet at the same time had taken charge so assertively. She was past the point of return it would seem because she pulled his down until she saw all of him in his entirety, and she blushed to the roots of her hair.

Now she knew where he got his cocky ego from.

He lightly chuckled as she turned away, removing his garments and hers and throwing them off the bed. He moved close to her again, his hands moving her legs around his own. Lennie gasped at the feeling of his bare thighs sliding against her own, so new and unfamiliar. Jonathan took her head, turned to the side, and brought it back to look at him.

He looked so assured as he dipped his head forward. His breathing calm against her cheek, as if he had done these a thousand times. Lennie felt like her heart was going to stop, and it did when he grinned. "Hey."

She grinned right back, because at the end and beginning he had known just what she needed, and was thankful that he still had the decency to see her. "Hi."

Lennie's sudden embarrassment left at his hungry kisses, and would not return, she leaned forward to capture his lips in her own intense kiss that she didn't feel him aligning with her entrance until was too late.

"Hm." He pushed in with little time for her to be ready, his length and girth pushed her over the edge, never had she felt so full, so overwhelmed, but that would be a lie.

He had been giving her foreplay for weeks, filling her with reasons to ant this, these past hours had been a seductive dance of agony, and her core was wet beyond any recognition that she had ever known before. He had the opportunity to feel that firsthand.

"Damn Lennie." He cursed against her lips at the feeling of her clenching against him. He found purchase on her thighs and rolled out, all the way out, to push all the way back in, she couldn't stop the keen cry that was pushed out of her chest.

She rocked with him, and kept rocking as he kept that delicious consistent and unrelenting pace. His fingers digging into her thighs, her legs tucked around the curve of his ass that she loved so much, and she held to her dear life on the hairs at the nap of his head. They rutted like animals, just for the thrill, and nothing else mattered but for them to reach the end.

He drew out a long moan from Lennie's lips, each thrust only making it worse and better, bowing her spine to press herself further on him, squeezing him with her legs, and scratching him on his shoulders.

"Let go, just let go."

The delicious throb was back in Lennie's belly, the one that had grown in the café, and now was set on fire.

She could feel him holding back, and knew he was dying for her to join him. She pushed through all the rational parts of her mind to reach down between them, and rub her clit furiously. That was it.

Lennie was losing her mind in pleasure. It pushed her over the edge. Surely enough it did, she felt the climatic throes of her first orgasm pulse through the nerves she wasn't even sure she had before meeting him.

He wasn't finished.

Lennie couldn't even catch her breath as he neared his own end. Every snap of his hips made her feel more lustful than the last, and not even her most licentious fantasies could compare to the face he was making now, his eyes swallowed in black, hair drenched in sweat, his lips gritted as if it pained him to keep this going. "Let go Jon."

He came in her like a sound of thunder, the vibrations moving through her and making her shiver in pleasure. They were one. Sweat. Limbs. Arms gripping. Teeth gnashing for the completion that every conversation had been leading up to. "Jon." The word meant so much in that moment, and in that moment his black eyes turned green.

She wanted to shriek at the sight of the foreign eyes staring down at her. His eyes that had always been dark were now a vibrant green like the scales of a fish or a snake. Too bright and otherworldly to have been a shimmer or illusion from the soft light of the fan above them. There was so much devotion in those eyes that it seemed to confuse and consume all of Lennie's thoughts."

 _"_ _Jon?"_ As if by some dark grace, Lennie loosed out a shallow breath of relief when they returned to the familiar black. She brought her forehead up to his, and she reached up to touch the strain of his neck, wishing that she could feel it for a lifetime, and stop this nagging fear that had come when his eyes had changed.

She was quite sure that Jonathan Morgernstern had no idea of this development, and Lennie wasn't sure if she should be the one to tell him.

He released all his strength in those moments. "Ugh." He laid down his weight on her.

For a few undisturbed minutes they enjoyed the after-glow of their hurried efforts, her fingers made lines across the long-raised slashing scars on his back, continuing by running a single finger where the deepest had made its mark, and she couldn't help but wonder what type of monster had defiled his body in such a way. Another part of herself found the scars were a badge of honor. If he could survive whatever had abused him so sadistically, then perhaps he could survive all the hell that came with her life.

As she slowly traced the deepest scar again, it caused his whole body to shiver, even the part that was growing hard once more inside her, and then he made a move to pull out of her. "No." She stopped tracing to hold his neck to hers, and her legs wrapped around the back of his thighs to keep him from taking what she had waited so long to have. "Stay for a bit."

"I'll crush you." He said in that consideration that had surprised her before.

Her sweaty limbs refused to move, "I can take it." The feeling of his body encasing, laying, and sharing his warmth was too pleasant to give up. "Don't worry, this is nice."

"Lennie," his chuckle was warm on her shoulder, but it left when he felt that she wouldn't release him. "Relax, Lennie." He tried soothing her, and she only gripped him tighter, not ready to let him go just yet.

He lifted his neck, so his warm words tickled her ear. "I'm not going anywhere."

It shocked her to know.

A more primal part of her _hummed_ to know that he meant it.

She knew that he did, because that feeling kept pounding in her chest was not apprehension, or fear of him playing her for the fool. She trusted her senses to keep her safe, and she felt an overwhelming ebb of warm gold at their completion, and the aftereffects stayed even now.

Lennie looked at Jonathan that rose to get a read on her too, and when she considered his eyes, those striking dark eyes that told a story of finding her, tracing her thumb over his chin, she felt their connection seemed stronger, a bright unforgivable cable of Adamas that connected to his own dark one. The bond stronger than anything she had ever experienced before.

"I'm not going anywhere." She repeated his words, a promise. "We stay together." She could feel him hardening, he leaned his hips back and rolled them back in experimentally.

Lennie looked down to see where they joined, the passion rising in his voice, "Together?"

"Together." This time she sealed their words with a soft kiss, and once again they lost themselves in those wide-eyed bursts of light.


End file.
